Tell HN: Generational Gap
So this week, I was teaching a new employee about the system. He is 30 years old and has been in the industry for six years now. At one point, I described an external tool that we use, which produces an XML file. Something felt off about his questions, and then a realization hit me:
"Do you know what XML is?"
He didn't.
I have a few takeaways:
1. I'm old. 2. I envy him—I hate XML. 99% of the time, it actively sabotages my work. 3. JSON simplicity won.
That's it. No moral.
"I envy him" - when I read at HN in comments when people discuss something I don't know, I envy them. I suspect that OP is also more about this (reading from his frustration), but "knowing something" doesn't always mean "have to work with something". Not knowing even at least vaguely that XML is something related to HTML is a flag of the lack of interest in the sphere you're working in
What’s DDE and its nearest relation?
Is there an ODBC driver for the DDE? ;-)
You assume too much. You have no idea what sphere I'm working in. we are so far removed from html that that it will make more sense to us to contribute to the OS/390 kernel if that was feasible
XML has robust tooling. JSON is created and used haphazardly.
Right, because JSON makes a great ad-hoc data format. XML is a heavy duty format with very strict heavy duty tooling which can do things that JSON isn’t a great fit for (heavily nested, structurally complex, large, exactingly created, extremely formalized, etc.) Developers of a certain age were traumatized by having to work with XML that was the default choice for applications that JSON would have been a much better fit for: lightweight tasks with ad-hoc formats like simple configuration files, simple request data for async JavaScript, etc. They often had lax specifications with poorly considered nesting rules, improper namespace configuration, etc. Or, even worse, I had to regularly parse large amounts of XML handwritten in editors by nontechnical people following policies written by other nontechnical people that thought they were technical.
Having to parse a big pile of sloppy JSON data can inspire you to take an eeextra long lunch. Having to parse a big pile of sloppy XML using real XML tools inspires you take an extra long lunch browsing job openings that don’t contain the word XML.